


step into the light

by 95echelon



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Heat (1995)
Genre: JUST, Pls do not read this, dont, make better life choices, seriously, why, why did I write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 14:46:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11946492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/95echelon/pseuds/95echelon
Summary: "What happens, when you die?" Jon asks."Nothing," the man replies, a little smile playing about his lips, his blue eyes hard and crystalline. "But you're not dead yet. Come on in, let me buy you a drink."Or, NYPD Detective Jon Snow and the Night's King, Queens' reigning mafia boss, walk into a bar.





	step into the light

**Author's Note:**

> pls dont read this trash. read something else. anything else.

The Night's King orders a whiskey sour. Jon orders a club soda. 

"You don't drink?"

"I don't drink around men like you."

The King accepts this. "That's probably smart," he comments, sipping his drink. The lights in the bar are dim, and they soften his hard, grey features. He almost looks... human. 

Strange, that. 

"You did four years at the Fist," Jon muses. "Six at Eastwatch, and three of those in the hole. You miss that time?"

"You plannin' a vacation? Pass through, what, each of New York's finest penitentiaries?"

"Looks to me like you are. I've chased some guys, in my time. Wilding kids, you know? Just boys lookin' to fuck up and get thrown back in, 'cause that's all they know. You one o' them?"

"Do I go around this city, lookin' for thrills? Hm?Jacking liquor stores in leather jackets with Born to Die tattooed 'cross my forehead? Do I look like I'm lackin' in self-preservation?"

"You don't. You're pretty goddamn well-preserved. That's my problem."

"Hell, detective, I do what I'm good at. Taking scores and making hits. Just so happens, it's a crime. I can't help that."

"You always wanted to do this? You never wanted, y'know, a regular kinda life?"

"What, ball games and barbecues?" He chuckles, and taps the rim of his emptied glass. The bartender glides over, pours another couple fingers and drifts away. "No," he says shortly. "Is that what you've got going? A regular kinda life?"

Jon smiles, watching condensation trickle down the sides of his soda. "I tried," he admits. "Didn't have a life outside the job, so I ended up marrying my partner. Great girl, brave and funny and gorgeous. Was mad about her."

"Something went wrong," the King deduces. 

"Aye. You killed her little boy."

There is a long beat of silence, before Jon continues. "She couldn't look me in the eye, after that. Moved cities, with her remaining kids. Never talked to me again."

"Sounds rough."

"Does it?" Jon asks, his smile like a rictus. "Tried again a second time, but now I'm starting to think I'm not cut out for this shit, y'know? She's startin' to hate me, 'cause I ain't ever 'round the house, spendin’ all my time chasing bastards like you. She's got a little sister that wants to join the PD, and the wife's scared to death she's gonna lose both of us. She blames me and I don't-"

Jon swallows the rest of the drink, and orders a scotch. 

The King smiles.

"My mentor used to tell me - don't ever love something you can't leave in 30 seconds, if you feel the heat comin’ from round the block. Thirty seconds."

"That's interesting. Fuckin' bleak, though." The scotch isn't so bad. "What about you, King? You a monk? Or you got someone?"

"Used to have a girl. Not anymore."

"Ah. The heat came for you, did it? Left her in your thirty seconds?"

"As it turned out, she was the heat. How do you think a guy like me ends up at the Fist?" The King smiles, bleak and empty, and Jon almost feels bad for him, until he remembers a little coffin he buried six years ago, the choir singing John Lennon, the lid nailed shut because the man in front of him had blown a shotgun right through V's face. 

He downs the scotch in one. 

"We're not so different," the King drawls, "you and I. I got my thing, and, man," he laughs, low and rustling, "I like doin' what I do. And you do what you're good at, cause you love it too."

"I don't," Jon snaps, briefly clenching his jaw before he forces himself to breathe out. Dr. Tarly's been after his ass all year - _remember to breathe, Jon, remember to breathe._ Jon breathes. It helps, some. 

"No? Then why do it? Go to your girl, Detective, and get her some flowers. Tell her she's pretty, take her to bed, have some babies. You still got time."

Jon smiles, picking up his glass between a thumb and a forefinger, letting the scotch swirl at the bottom, in a vortex of smooth, gleaming gold. "This job... It's the only thing I'm good at, you're right. I don't know to do anything else," he confesses. 

"Neither do I."

"I've tried, you know. Tried politics and tried family and tried falling in love. But I keep coming back to this, like a bad habit I can't shake. Man," he sighs, sliding the glass away, "I wish I was good at something else. Anything else. Painting, pottery. Psalms."

"Sounds dull," the King remarks dryly. They laugh. 

"I keep having this dream. I'm sitting in this great big stone room, with my first girl, and her kids. And we're surrounded by the corpses of all the people we didn't save. All the mothers, and all their children, all of them bones and rags and rotting away." He runs a finger around the rim of his glass, the bottom throwing fractals on the scarred wooden bar top. "All of them with blue eyes. Like yours."

"What do they say?"

"Nothing," Jon admits. "They say nothing. They just sit there, and watch me. Waiting. They've had all their words taken away, your army of the dead."

"What do you think it means?"

"That I've got a crippling fear of the zombie apocalypse? Who knows." Jon takes another swallow of scotch. "You ever have dreams like that?"

"Haven't had a dream since I died."

"You always call it that - dying. You and all your... Initiates. What does it mean?"

"Ah... Come on, detective. Don't tell me New York's finest haven't figured it out?" He tsks softly. "What _would_ the tax paying public think?"

Jon shrugs. "Not too worked up about that. They already hate us. You're not going to tell me? Why you call the initiation 'dying'?"

"Because I kill them, Jon Snow." He says this simply, as if it isn't something from a nightmare. "I kill their hopes and their fears and their love. I kill who they are, and who they could have become. And when they rise, they rise to serve me."

Jon smiles, but it never reaches his eyes. 

"Someday," Jon vows softly, "we're going to end up across a room from each other, at the business ends of our guns. I'm going to have trouble killing you, because it's the worst part of the job, the killing. But if it means somebody doesn't have to bury their kid, I'll do it. I will kill you, and I'll sleep just fine after."

The Night's King laughs once more, and Jon finds there's something about the sound, something sudden and unpracticed. "If it helps, Detective, I won't have any trouble killing you either."

Jon drinks the last of his scotch. "It does. That does help."

"One last drink then? To the next time we meet?"

"Aye, why not. To next time."

**Author's Note:**

> literally just congratulations for reaching all the way to end of this travesty. in my defense, i'm on a shit ton on flu meds and threfore cannot be held responsible for my actions. i also want y'all to know that the closest i've gotten to new york is a layover in jfk six years ago. i dont know jack about the city, which, lol, its pretty obvious from my writing yes? kthxbye.


End file.
